Yesterday, after a week with my new Debian 8 desktop running Mate, I
did an "aptitude update" and somehow upgraded "fglrx-control" among
other things (I have no idea if that was the genesis of my problem,
but later I found some nvidia packages installed wile I have an Intel
graphics device). I merrily continued to work until I had to shutdown
to go to my Linux group meeting. There I booted up my laptop (he
first reboot after the intial install) and could not get a graphical
display!
I have fooled with it all day to no avail. I discovered just now that
I can get an X program to display from a remote login into the laptop,
but nothing on the physical laptop. I have tried reinstalling MATE as
well as xfce to no avail.
When booting I get a flash of a message saying:
[FAILED] Failed to start Light Display Manager.
See 'systemctl status lightdm.service' for details.
When I execute "systemctl status lightdm.service" I get:
# systemctl status lightdm.service
* lightdm.service - Light Display Manager
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/lightdm.service; enabled)
Active: failed (Result: start-limit) since Tue 2016-04-05 14:31:51
CDT; 3min 19s ago
Docs: man:lightdm(1)
Process: 833 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/lightdm (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Process: 829 ExecStartPre=/bin/sh -c [ "$(cat
/etc/X11/default-display-manager 2>/dev/null)" = "/usr/sbin/lightdm" ]
(code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 833 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Apr 05 14:31:51 juvat2 systemd[1]: lightdm.service: main process
exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Apr 05 14:31:51 juvat2 systemd[1]: Unit lightdm.service entered failed state.
Apr 05 14:31:51 juvat2 systemd[1]: lightdm.service start request
repeated too quickly, refusing to start.
Apr 05 14:31:51 juvat2 systemd[1]: Failed to start Light Display Manager.
Apr 05 14:31:51 juvat2 systemd[1]: Unit lightdm.service entered failed state.
I will reinstall Debian 8 from scratch if necessary, but that would be
a real pain, so I would appreciate any hints.
Thanks.
Best regards,
-Tom
